Category Archives: General discussion

Anything else.

Begging the Question, General discussion, Michael Gerson, specious comparisons

You’re no MLK

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Guess who this is:

Like other American heroes . . . . [NAME] was not a simple figure. He inclined toward democratic socialism as the answer to poverty. In his opposition to the Vietnam War, he called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and thundered that God might "break the backbone" of American power. Toward the end of his short life — after years of fire hoses and attack dogs, wiretaps and bomb threats — [NAME] became increasingly isolated and depressed.

Sounds like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright–or someone equally "angry."  But no, it's Martin Luther King.  One might be tempted from such a description to rethink the universal condemnation of Reverend Wright.  In his own context, Martin Luther King said some pretty astounding things about God's judgment of American arrogance.  But where one might draw lessons from history, Michael Gerson sees only differences.  People other than King, you know, the people like the Reverend Wright (Gerson oddly doesn't use any of Wright's words in this piece on why he's no MLK), are unamerican.

Under King's leadership, the civil rights movement affirmed several principles: a belief that Providence favors justice and forbids despair; a belief that even the most bigoted whites have a core of humanity that might be touched and redeemed; a belief that American ideals were the ultimate answer to America's sins.

These beliefs were often criticized by King's contemporaries such as Malcolm X (who dismissed the 1963 March on Washington as the "Farce on Washington") and Stokely Carmichael (who argued that voting rights were "irrelevant to the lives of black people"). And these beliefs remain controversial with leaders such as Wright and professor James Cone, the father of black liberation theology. "Black theology," wrote Cone, "will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

The problem with this approach is not that it is political, or even liberal — the African American church has generally been both. The problem is that it leads to a dead end of anger, conspiracy theories and futility. And it ignores the deeper radicalism of the American experiment — the radicalism of full citizenship and justice for every American — that inspired King, and that will inspire others.

The problem with Wright, you see, is that he seems to claim that the American experiment (when will people stop saying that?  The experiment is over by now) hasn't produced "full citizenship and justice for every American."  How dare he.

Charles Krauthammer, General discussion, Harold Meyerson, Michael Gerson

Everyday America

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(I think I've mentioned this issue once before) Rare it is when columnists mention one another's arguments.  There seems to be some kind of agreement that you can't mention another columnist by  name (although I seem to remember George Will doing this to Krugman once).  So imagine my surprise when I read Harold Meyerson this morning.  He writes:

This year, we can expect to see almost nothing but these kinds of assaults as the campaign progresses. The Republican attack against Obama all but ignores the issue differences between the candidates to go after what is presumably his inadequately American identity. He is, writes one leading conservative columnist, "out of touch with everyday America." His reluctance to wear a flag pin, writes another, shows that he "has declared himself superior to an almost universal form of popular patriotism."

The first quote is Charles Krauthammer, the second Michael Gerson (we talked about it the other day).  In fairness to the columnists, who both write for The Washington Post, Meyerson ought to give more context.  If he did, he'd be unable to argue that they assert these things themselves.  Rather, they merely observe the fact that others will assert them.  First Krauthammer:

It wasn't until late in the fourth quarter that she found the seam in Obama's defense. In fact, Obama handed her the playbook with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Michelle Obama's comments about never having been proud of America and Obama's own guns-and-God condescension toward small-town whites.

The line of attack is clear: not that Obama is himself radical or unpatriotic, just that, as a man of the academic left, he is so out of touch with everyday America that he could move so easily and untroubled in such extreme company and among such alien and elitist sentiments.

Clinton finally understood the way to run against Obama: back to the center — not ideologically but culturally, not on policy but on attitude. She changed none of her positions on Iraq or Iran or health care or taxes. Instead, she transformed herself into working-class Sally-get-her-gun, off duck hunting with dad.

He's talking about Clinton, hardly a Republican.  Whether Krauthammer's account of Hillary's position is true is another story.  He certainly doesn't think it's true to call Obama unpatriotic.  But he doesn't really care.  Now Gerson:

The problem here is not that Obama is unpatriotic — a foolish, unfair, destructive charge — but that Obama has declared himself superior to an almost universal form of popular patriotism. And this sense of superiority, revealed in case after case, has political consequences, because the Obama narrative reinforces the Democratic narrative. It is now possible to imagine Obama at a cocktail party with Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, sharing a laugh about gun-toting, Bible-thumping, flag-pin-wearing, small-town Americans.

Gerson doesn't care either.  Meyerson would have a stronger argument had he directed it at the media types who will repeat these charges in just the way Krauthammer and Gerson have.  Sure, they argue, they're not true.  But still, will everyday, real Americans–who apparently have no regard for the truth and don't read Gerson or Krauthammer–be convinced by them?

After all, if everyday Americans read Gerson and Krauthammer, they'd know that such charges are baseless.  Wouldn't they?

 

Argument Analysis, David Brooks, Other problems, Unclassifiable

Religious experience

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Just as my lawyer friends cannot watch "Law and Order," my doctor friends cannot watch "ER," and my military friends cannot watch "Missing in Action," I find it hard to read things like the following meditation on the philosophy of mind from David Brooks.  He writes:

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

That could be any number of views known as materialism (or compatible with it).  Brooks contrasts this view with the following:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

That's still materialism of a fairly decisive variety.  On the strength of this, he erroneously concludes:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

Notice these descriptions are all brain-sided.  Intuitions, experience, "love," etc., all are all, on the view Brooks is describing, neurologically based.  That's still a variety of materialism. 

General discussion

Extreme learning

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Having spent more than ten years now trying to convince people to get their learn on, I now learn that perhaps that was a waste of time:

Dr. Kawecki says it is worth investigating whether humans also pay hidden costs for extreme learning. “We could speculate that some diseases are a byproduct of intelligence,” he said.

The whole thing is worth a read. 

Bad Explanations, Contradictions, General discussion, Michael Gerson

Irresistible

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In the blind squirrels and nuts category, here's Michael Gerson today:

In the past few weeks, Barack Obama has learned the political perils of condescension.

His Philadelphia speech on race was filled with it. People who don't share Obama's views were not refuted, they were explained.

Lower-income whites, he argued, "feel their dreams slipping away," and so they turn to resentment against busing and affirmative action, "anger over welfare" and "fears of crime." And Obama not only understands these angry and manipulated souls, he defends them. They should not, after all, be labeled as "misguided" or "racist."

This is the same argument, expressed more bluntly at a San Francisco fundraiser, that Obama made about bitter, small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion. He does not even admit the possibility that these folks might have actual convictions on issues such as affirmative action, welfare, crime, gun ownership or the meaning of the universe. The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained.

He's right about this (and we've complained about this a bunch).  And he would have been even more right had he said that his page at the Post is fully of explanations rather than arguments (rather than take a few words out of context from Obama).  But then Gerson inexplicably (hee hee) writes:

But black liberation theology takes this argument a large step further — or perhaps backward. The Rev. Wright's intellectual mentor, professor James Cone of Union Theological Seminary, retreats from the universality of Christianity. "Black theology," says Cone, "refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him." And again: "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." And again: "In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors."

This emphasis on the structural evil of white America has natural political consequences — encouraging a belief that American politics is defined by its crimes, a tendency to accept anti-government conspiracy theories about AIDS and drugs, a disturbing openness to anti-American dictators such as Castro and Gaddafi. It explains Wright's description of the Sept. 11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America."

What would explain Gerson's condescending explanation of Reverend Wright?  Maybe the impulse to condescension is irresistible. 

General discussion

Media metric

4 Comments

One might make a distinction between two approaches to argument analysis.  One approach looks at the assembly of facts asserted and wonders whether they ought to be candidates for assent.  The other approach, the rhetorical approach, measures an argument's effectiveness at producing beliefs, actions, policies, etc., independently of its mastery of "logic" or "facts" or anything else.  It's actually quite easy to determine whether arguments are successful on this approach, as you simply measure their effectiveness by the methods of quantitative sociology. 

One frequently relied upon rhetorical metric is the press (there are others–polling for instance).  Take the political press–find out what they're talking about, and you have a pretty good idea who is winning what argument (especially come election time).  This quick and dirty heuristic, however, grants the political press (a rather small group not representative of anything or elected by anyone) a lot of power in determining whether candidates are up to snuff.  And it also has the effect of making pettiness the center of the democratic process (hold the laughs).  To my mind, if you're going to measure the rhetorical effectiveness of "arguments," then at least pick a better measure than what the political press is yammering about. Here for instance is the view of a letter writer for the New York Times:

Recent articles help to clarify Barack Obama’s weakness not so much as a candidate but more basically as a potential functioning president.

Mr. Obama has been powerless to moderate the controversial views of his former pastor and, according to his campaign, Mr. Obama can now do nothing to deter the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. from his divisive course.

Mr. Obama has chosen to separate himself from Mr. Wright, but even this decisive if belated action undercuts and perhaps illustrates the limitations of his claimed ability to bring us together. 

That fact that two things are getting talked about together is enough for this letter writer to suppose some kind of meaningful causal connection: after all, people wouldn't be talking about Obama and Wright if Obama were a better candidate, would they?  Obama ought to be able to shut the process down, and his failure to do that is evidence of his weakness as a candidate (the press can't shut up about it, after all). 

This reminds of an episode of Nightline on the Swift Boat business.  The moderator (or whatever you call him), asked entirely self-referential questions about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.  He reveled in the curiousity and the interest that people in the press, like him, were talking about the Swift Boat story.  He wasn't talking about whether it was true, but only what it meant.  And the fact itself that he was talking about it meant something, didn't it?  He wouldn't be talking about it if it weren't important.

   

David Brooks, General discussion, specious comparisons

Shared values

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I wonder what the value question is here:

Then there are the cultural issues. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News are taking a lot of heat for spending so much time asking about Jeremiah Wright and the “bitter” comments. But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry’s windsurfing or John Edwards’s haircut as clues about shared values.

When Obama began this ride, he seemed like a transcendent figure who could understand a wide variety of life experiences. But over the past months, things have happened that make him seem more like my old neighbors in Hyde Park in Chicago.

Some of us love Hyde Park for its diversity and quirkiness, as there are those who love Cambridge and Berkeley. But it is among the more academic and liberal places around. When Obama goes to a church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology, when he makes ill-informed comments about working-class voters, when he bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he’s one of them. Obama has to address those doubts, and he has done so poorly up to now.

What else can one say?  One of these things is not like the other. 

Ad Hominem, Ad hominem tu quoque, General discussion

Ad hominems

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Unfortunately, many Introduction to Philosophy students leave with several misconceptions about the nature of fallacious reasoning.  They draw the conclusion that fallacies are a kind of negative guide to reasoning.  For instance, never attack the person, as such attacks break the ad hominem rule.  Another misconception is that calling something a fallacy is sufficient for dismissing someone's position.  That's an ad hominem, therefore, etc.  Unfortunately, some–even some professor types–seem to think this characterizes the entire field of inquiry into fallacious reasoning: when fallacies are discussed, they see a kind of juvenile name calling in place of honest and fair analysis.

Sometimes, however, that's the case.  This, for instance, would seem like a reasonable accusation of an ad hominem:

All of which brings us to the distinctly Greenwald parts of the book–Greenwald takes an unseemly relish in engaging in irrelevant personal attacks. Personally attacking Ronald Reagan at least makes sense on some level. But personally attacking private citizens with different ideologies has a certain senselessness attached to it.

But no.  The relevance of "personal attacks" depends on the conclusion drawn–not on the object of the attack.  Personally attacking Ronald Reagan makes sense only when the "attack" draws a conclusion relevant to the attack.  Reagan's personality is no more relevant in the grand scheme of things than that of any private citizen.  While we expect a politician to be subject to such attacks, those attacks aren't more justified on logical grounds.

This is especially the case when the question concerns hypocrisy.  Al Gore is not a hypocrite for driving a car, unless he says "don't drive a car."  He says, "Climate science says x, y, and z."  Whether he drives a car is separate question.  His driving a car has nothing to do with that particular argument.  Now, when someone calls someone else a moral degenerate who should not be trusted, you're going to reasonably wonder about the purity of the accuser–to do so doesn't make you any less of a degenerate, all things considered, but it the credibility of the accuser is certainly relevant–insofar as his accusation rests on his credibility.  Continuing from above,

Even if every reader of Great American Hypocrites walked away from the several pages that attack Norman Podhoretz (to take just one of the many conservative thinkers that Greenwald assails) convinced that Podhoretz is just about the most awful person to ever walk the face of the Earth, Podhoretz's ideas would remain unscathed. Podhoretz has never argued that a reader should agree with his ideas because he is such a wonderful guy. Instead, the ideas have a life of their own.

Greenwald's own success makes his personal attacks particularly ironic. There was nothing in Glenn Greenwald's background that suggested he should have been one of the kings of the progressive blogosphere. And Russ Feingold didn't read passages from Greenwald's first book from the Senate floor because Greenwald is such a fine human being. Greenwald gained prominence because of the power of his ideas and his writing. Whatever prominence he retains will also result exclusively from the quality of his work. It's a mystery why he doesn't realize that it operates the same way at all spots on the ideological spectrum.

Great American Hypocrites will likely be a big hit. Whatever the equivalent of red meat is for the angry left, this book is it. As a confessed Greenwald admirer, I found it largely disappointing. Like the rest of us, Greenwald has both strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Too much of Great American Hypocrites indulges his fondness for pointless ad hominem attacks, the weakest aspect of his work.

Many of Greenwald's fans will probably take delight in his description of Rush Limbaugh as a "draft-avoiding, illegal-pill-addicted and multiple-divorced (man) burdened with one of the most decadent and degraded lives of any public figure anywhere." Whether they take note of the irony that a mere two pages later Greenwald decries our "attack-based personality-obsessed politics" is an open question.

If Greenwald himself sees the irony, he doesn't betray any such awareness in "Great American Hypocrites."

It seems facile to accuse someone of hypocrisy for accusing someone else of hypocrisy.  That succinct and true description of Rush Limbaugh, in other words, is not a fallacious ad hominem unless Greenwald uses that as evidence to dismiss views unrelated to Limbaugh's character–or the moral character of those whose positions he advocates in the course of making those attacks.  But that, I take it, is not Greenwald's point in writing a book about hypocrites.

It always depends, in the end, on the conclusion you're drawing.  If you want to malign John Kerry's manhood (as Limbaugh did) by way of supporting Bush as the alternative, then Bush's comparative manhood is a relevant question.  That, I take it, is Greenwald's point.  But I'll leave that to him.

Argument Analysis, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Ruth Marcus, Straw Man

With or Without Yoo

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Two interesting quotations from Ruth Marcus’s Washington Post column–One pro John Yoo, tortured torture memo writer, one contra.  The first one, from Columbia University law Professor Scott Horton, addresses someone (Elder) who does not find Yoo’s legal work grounds for discipline or revocation of his tenure at Berkeley.  He says that Elder

"is appropriately concerned about freedom of expression for his
faculty. But he should be much more concerned about the message that
all of this sends to his students. Lawyers who act on the public stage
can have an enormous impact on their society and the world around them.
. . . Does Dean Edley really imagine that their work is subject to no
principle of accountability because they are mere drones dispensing
legal analysis?"

There’s a wide gulf between "not punishable in this instance by the University" and "subject to no principle of accountability."  Horton sets up a false dichotomy–accountable or not.

On the pro-Yoo side:

The most useful analogy I’ve read on this subject comes from Princeton
professor Deborah Pearlstein, who asked what Berkeley would do if a
molecular biology professor "had written a medical opinion while in
government employ disclaiming the truth of evolution," and continued to
dispute the theory of evolution once he resumed teaching.

Pearlstein,
a human rights lawyer, found Yoo’s memo "blatantly, embarrassingly
wrong under the law," but she conceded that legal conclusions lack the
hard certainty of scientific truth. Yoo should no more be removed from
a teaching job than a Supreme Court justice who writes a despicable
opinion — upholding slavery, allowing separate but equal facilities,
permitting the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II —
should be impeached.

I’m confused by the analogy in the first paragraph.  If that’s the case, then indeed Yoo ought to be fired for not having competence in his subject matter.  Academic freedom ought not be a cover for incompetence.  But I doubt he would have gotten that far anyway. 

The second paragraph rings odd.  And it hardly makes the point that Yoo ought to be protected from firing.  Any Supreme Court judge who argues for slavery ought to be impeached–now (and probably back then as well).  Even though legal opinions lack the "hard certainty" of scientific truth (whatever that means), it doesn’t mean that some legal opinions are simply beyond the pale.  

By most accounts–even friendly ones–Yoo’s opinions were beyond the pale.  The fact is, however, that was a different job.  This seems to me to be the key difference that’s being overlooked here.  Berkeley was dumb enough to hire him and give him tenure.  They ought to be ashamed.  But it’s too late now. 

Of course, if he broke the law and is found to have committed war crimes, then indeed, he ought to be fired.  But that’s a matter for, er, the law.  

 

General discussion

Majoring in Philosophy

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This justification for majoring in Philosophy is ironically circular:

When a fellow student at Rutgers University urged Didi Onejeme to try Philosophy 101 two years ago, Ms. Onejeme, who was a pre-med sophomore, dismissed it as “frou-frou.”

“People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff — I mean, who cares?” Ms. Onejeme recalled thinking at the time.

But
Ms. Onejeme, now a senior applying to law school, ended up changing her
major to philosophy, which she thinks has armed her with the skills to
be successful. “My mother was like, what are you going to do with
that?” said Ms. Onejeme, 22. “She wanted me to be a pharmacy major, but
I persuaded her with my argumentative skills.”

If anything, a philosophy major will help you find an argument to justify your being a philosophy major.